


Worlds in Words

by arioso_dolente



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Betrayal, Extended Metaphors, F/M, Flying, Free Verse, Gen, Guilt, Introspection, Lies, Loneliness, Not a Crossover, Poetry, Unrequited Love, Winter Solstice, monomyth, really vague spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-02-25
Updated: 2013-08-20
Packaged: 2017-12-14 01:08:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 1,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/830951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arioso_dolente/pseuds/arioso_dolente
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of all my freeverse fan poetry.  Fandoms, characters, and subject matter may vary.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Harry Potter: Evolution

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Severus Snape: The only constant is change. The stirrings of life, and its sure speeding toward death.

This is how the world begins:  
somewhere, something small changes,  
as if by chance, by some indiscriminate mutation,  
time, inestimable time passes,  
something _more_ changes,  
and at once,  
change decides for itself.

This is how _his_ world begins:  
small and dark and brown,  
fraught with fear and damp and noise.  
It is unknowing, immediate,  
fragile.  
It is his.  
It is what he is.  
Then, change—  
a flash, a  
glimpse of clever darting eyes,  
green as the depths of the river  
where he chases frogs too fast for his boyish hands.  
It is enough.  
It tells him who he is, now.  
It tells him who he will be.

Who he is is razor-balanced,  
precise, tender, afraid.  
It is not enough, some days, to  
look into her eyes,  
find who he is.  
Her eyes read passion, laughter, _life_ —  
but never certainty,  
always change.  
So he changes. It becomes his life,  
a breathless tripping of fast tongues,  
fearful dance of arms and legs,  
clever twists of truth.  
He hopes it is enough for her;  
she _wants_ change, doesn't she? She is change.  
But one day he trips too far,  
and loses her.  
He cannot catch her again.  
It is what he is, now.

And something is wrong—  
the world is dark and brown,  
no more small, but fearful still,  
because now it has teeth,  
moon-white fangs that call for blood;  
and though she is there,  
with her laughter and her smile and her  
changing, changing eyes,  
he cannot see her past the edges and tears and fading screams.  
So he follows the white fear,  
because it is all he can see now.  
It becomes his life,  
still taut and tender and afraid,  
only without her.  
He tells himself it is enough,  
that he is living,  
and some days he almost believes it.

Until something moves,  
changes,  
and he is aware of himself.  
He sees her, again,  
still changing him,  
because that is what she is.  
And he has found himself again.  
He knows who he is.

The green eyes are gone  
and it strikes him through the chest,  
but the truth is,  
they burn in his own every time he closes them,  
insistent,  
wide and terrible and amazing.  
It does not matter that they are gone from his sight  
when they stand like sentinels  
over his guarded heart.  
Always, _always_ —  
when he plays the tongue-tripping game,  
when he makes himself subtle and changeable as water,  
he knows it is really her.  
She is who he is.

This is how the world ends:  
with a rush,  
a whirl of being dissolving into naught,  
motion coming to rest at last.  
This is how _his_ world ends:  
with a frightful dance coming to close  
as a circle completed;  
with a gleam of moon-white fangs  
and a flash,  
a glimpse  
of forest-green eyes.


	2. Harry Potter: There's a Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Severus Snape: There's a man who lives alone. Such things they say about him.

They say he’s a ghost, a  
specter of another time, haunting the  
dull, crowded streets,  
buildings with dusty, broken windows,  
sad wasted people.  
He must be, they insist:  
what living man could stalk though shadows like a wraith  
and disappear just as quickly?

Others will scoff:  
he lives, or  
he _lived_ , at any rate.  
They will still remember when he returned to them,  
crashing through the tired streets like thunder.  
He was dangerous then, but at least  
he was human.  Now,  
he’s still dangerous  
and that’s all there is to him.  
When he first came,  
he was sad and angry.  
Now, he’s just angry.  If he is a spirit,  
there is no soul left to him,  
only the husk of humanity,  
dry as the faded newspaper  
that blows restlessly in the  
desperate streets.


	3. Harry Potter: That Oldest Art

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter Pettigrew: The art of betrayal was an easy one to master.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sincerest apologies to Elizabeth Bishop.

In the end, there was no definite path to disaster.  
It began as something everyday:  
a glance that lingered a shade too long  
from a stranger;  
a seductive eye,  
a smoldering serpent’s smile.  
It lay somewhere in the secret naggings  
of unexpressed doubt,  
resentments built like piled stones over  
the brow,  
his pleading, trembling hands.  
If there were losses,  
(his trust, dreamless nights, his gasping breaths)  
they were negligible, unlikely to be missed—  
nothing would ever come of them.

He would never say, later,  
where the destruction began.  
Perhaps it had always been,  
flowering in his breast, a vine  
that waited,  
and slowly gave,  
and _was_ —  
that which ate and ripened and grew  
leaving only  
holes  
behind.


	4. Harry Potter: In Memoriam

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Severus Snape: Even when he tries not to, he remembers her.

He remembers her, some days—  
days when dry leaves run together  
like rushing water.

Despite what they will say later,  
he doesn’t remember her all the time.  
How could he?  The best days are the ones he manages to  
forget, when one hour easily passes to the next,  
thoughts only barely stirring like  
slow, waking birds.

The problem comes when he remembers  
and doesn’t know why.  
If it’s not the leaves,  
it’s a certain shade to the sunlight  
that recalls the way it filtered through her hair.  
It’s in the satin of discarded flower petals,  
and then it’s her small hand in his.  
It’s in her favorite kind of curry  
(vindaloo, extra spicy),  
the last book she read,  
the careful swoop of her handwriting.

He’s not trying to be loyal, remembering her.  
He wishes he could not be, because  
some days,  
her presence is a rope around his neck.  
For him, remembrance _is_ ,  
as much as the leaves, or the sun, or breathing,  
or his thoughts,  
circling  
hour by hour in raging swarms.


	5. Harry Potter: Silent Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Severus Snape: In a graveyard on the darkest night of the year, something still shines bright.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally written for Christmas. Warning for shameless paraphrasing of as many Christmas carols as I could get away with.

He cannot bear the scent of  
life, of green things growing,  
of tiny, pale new leaves of grass.  
So he comes at night, the longest night,  
the darkest night.  
He comes only when white coats the earth,  
smothering all sensation,  
softened, dispassionate.  
It makes no difference, though.  
She is the same. Now, all the world is  
frozen, motionless  
like the gleaming shapes of stones around him,  
stars that shine only for him.  
He knows how he must look,  
a black blot on all the pale snow,  
his harsh shadow the imprint of a wild animal;  
but right now,  
there is no color,  
no scent of trees or grass,  
holly or evergreen or sharp cedar smoke.  
His world is crystalline,  
a tableau of black and white,  
and it is almost enough.  
The only thing that pierces his tranquility  
is the breath of voices on the still air,  
bringing words of  
roses with fragrant sweetness,  
wisdom, splendor, life.  
He is still and silent  
as black iron,  
standing before the marble stone that shines  
white as a lily flower.


	6. Harry Potter: Faithless

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Severus Snape: He was always the best of liars. He never realized how true that was.

He was always a good liar.  
I knew that more than most, I  
saw him as he sat at table and cut his  
meat and vegetables and  
 _lied_.  
The best liars lie even to themselves.  
He was always the best of liars.

He always hated the child, he said.  
Never said why, but he was never as aloof as he liked to seem.  
If he could, he would have said  
he hated the child for looking too much like _her_.

He thought I didn’t know who _her_ was.  
He may have been the best of liars, but he was as transparent as ever.  
He lied to me, but he didn’t know  
he lied to himself for  
thinking he hated the child because of _her_.

His mouth may have lied,  
tongue snapping forth invective  
in low growling waves,  
but the rest of him didn’t.  
I saw the way his pale hands trembled—  
like poplar leaves, like  
tremulous birds.  
I saw his eyes dart away, black with  
secrets and pain,  
the thin carved moue of his lips.  
He was the best of liars, but to me  
even that wasn’t enough.

He hated, surely—  
he never lied about that—  
but it was never that child he hated,  
or if he did,  
never in a hatred born of honesty.  
He hated because it was all he knew to do,  
the lying came in the target.  
I knew.  
I saw.  
I saw the way he never smiled,  
never indulged in anything that  
could be mistaken for pleasure,  
the severe black he swathed himself in.  
Oh, he hated—  
perhaps he never realized how much.  
But he was always the best of liars.


	7. Sherlock: Der Himmel über London

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock Holmes: Falling is just like flying. Except it's far more perfect.

Sometimes you think your life has been like this:  
all the world’s black and white and it falls  
lovely, elegant  
into neat rows of ideas for you,  
the only one who can interpret them.  
Sometimes you think your life is  
crystalline, alit in sacramental simplicity.  
Sometimes you think that’s enough, that  
(feeling, like flying, the only feeling that matters)  
rush of wind and exhilaration, like the  
city’s spread as a map below that only you can read—  
no one sees, but you do and sometimes, _sometimes_  
that’s more than enough.  It has always been this way  
and this has always been enough.  
The one thing you never know, can never predict,  
is where the imperfections will fall,  
the blots on the map,  
scratches in your naive glass existence.  
Sometimes you think your life is not the knowing  
but the imperfections.  
Sometimes it’s the practiced walk unexpectedly  
broken by a wayward smile,  
the brush of a hand,  
an awkward joke.  
It’s in these moments that  
your doubts creep in,  
all rows and maps collapse—  
(do you ever wonder if there’s something wrong with us)  
and you feel yourself begin to fall.  
Sometimes you wonder how your life has become like this and yet  
you want to feel more than wind and cold awareness,  
because falling has a ferocious bite  
far sweeter than flying and  
sometimes,  
it’s bleeding colors  
more perfect and painful  
than you can dream.


	8. Legend of Zelda OoT: Boy Alone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Link: He's always known something wasn't quite right. To find out the reason, he had to leave the forest.

They tell him  
 _every day the world is new._  
They tell him  
 _we are connected_ and  
 _we are old and they are young_ and  
 _the plants grow when we sing._  
They listen to music no one hears.  
Some days he hates them.  
  
He always knows when something isn’t right.  
He knows when he looks into her eyes and sees  
oceans and wars and madness and poetry, when  
he wants to grasp her and show her all he sees in her eyes.  
She sees nothing of that in him.  
  
They tell him  
 _all life that grows is ours_ and  
 _we grow and we live without twilight_ and  
 _we will never become like them._  
They tell him  
 _there is something in you we cannot know._  
He never needed them to tell him that.  
  
He knows it isn’t right after  
he plucks a flower for her and her  
eyes are betrayed.  She looks at him like  
she’s never seen something so alien.  
It’s never quite the same after that.  
  
He’ll never tell,  
but he’s glad to leave the forest.  
The world has wars  
(and madness and the rest of it)  
but at least its people bleed.  
They’ve told him  
 _we are the souls of green things breathing_ and  
 _we will die if we ever leave this forest_ but  
  
he never feels more alive than when  
he pushes through the trees and the  
sun bleaches his sight, when  
the spent day finally passes through the sky, when  
the world erupts with the voices  
of clashing lives on endless plains,  
of stars rushing into uncertain night.


End file.
